Concepts of Classical Concepts of Classical ConditioningConditioning

Concepts of Classical Concepts of Classical ConditioningConditioning

Adaptive Value• The usefulness of

certain abilities or traits that have evolved in animals and humans that tend to increase their chances of survival.

• Ex: Finding food, acquiring mates, avoiding pain and/or injury.

Taste Aversion• Associating a

particular sensory cue (smell, taste, sound, sight) with getting sick and thereafter avoiding that particular sensory cue in the future.

Examples of Taste Aversion

• Rats not eating poison after they get sick by eating it one time.

• Humans not eating a certain food because they got sick once.

Conditioned Emotional Response

• A feeling some positive or negative emotion such as happiness, fear, or anxiety, when experiencing a stimulus that initially accompanied a pleasant or painful event.

Examples of Conditioned Emotional

Response• Fear of needles due

to bad experience as a child.

• Fear of all dogs because of a previous dog attack.

• Experiencing happiness (or sadness) when a couple’s “song” is heard.

Examples of Classical Conditioning

• Blue Jays and Monarch Butterflies

• Humans at a restaurant holding the menu… with pictures.

• Children and the ice cream truck.

Conditioning Little Albert

• In 1920, psychologist John Watson decided to perform an experiment to prove classical conditioning.

The Experiment• Subject: 9 month old infant

nicknamed “Albert”• Neutral Stimuli: white rat; white

rabbit; fur coat• Unconditioned Stimulus: Noise

(hammer banged on metal)• Unconditioned Response:

Startle/Cry

An Overview• Watson and his assistant (Rosalie

Rayner) wrote that Albert was a healthy, good, and unemotional baby that hardly ever cried.

• Watson and Rayner introduced the rat, rabbit, and coat to Albert separately and Albert’s curiosity made him joyfully play with the animals.

Overview Continued• Shortly after recording responses,

Watson and his team began to bang a hammer loudly onto a piece of metal behind Albert to elicit a startle and fear.

• They began to do this often at the same time as introducing the rat.

Continued• After getting cries and fear each

time, they began introducing the rat with no noise… Albert still presented fear and cried/crawled away.

• They introduced the rabbit and fur coat (never introduced with noise) and Albert responded the same way.

Results• In just two months, Albert was

classically conditioned to fear anything with white fur.

• Shortly after the experiment, Watson was fired from John Hopkins University for having an affair with Rayner.

Long Term Results• Watson was widely criticized for

not unconditioning Albert. • Watson and his team never

revealed Albert’s true identity or no one ever found out if Albert’s conditioning was permanent.

Albert• In 2010, a team of psychologists and

students did massive amounts of research in an effort to find Albert.

• They were successful… Albert was born to a nurse at the hospital that lived and worked on campus. She remained close to Albert throughout the experiment and was paid $1 for her involvement.

Albert’s Fate• Unfortunately, Albert died at the age

of 6 due to a disease unrelated to anything involving the experiment.

• The grandson to Albert’s mother (Albert’s nephew) was one of the researchers that worked to find Albert’s identity.